The Brand Evangelist

The event is organised my the Parents teachers association. This is a sign that parents are concerned. There is need for concern.

Why Be Concerned?

Unlike Telivision and cable TV that have parental control, there is limit to how parents can control what their children do when accessing the web.

Parents may decides not to hand over smartphone to their children. However, many private schools now have internet access within the school. A school may decide to block access to social media sites. [Do schools actually do that?]

From my investigation with a prominent member of the PTA of the school where I will be speaking, she made it clear to me that the children have access to internet on home computer and also have personal smart phones.

With access to the web and social media sites on computer and mobile, the children are expose to huge influence--good and bad.

If you're a parent and you don't know much about what social media may be exposing your children to, here is a few list:

1. Influence - The most popular among the social media of the day is Facebook with over 800 million users. There is also Twitter, Tumblr, 2go, Blackberry messenger and a host of others. With a Facebook and twitter account, young ones can connect with their popular TV, musical, game and Movie online.

If parents control the music, game, movie and TV programmes that children see at home, there's little control they can have when their ward are accessing contents online via social networks. Youths are influenced more by what their friends tell them and what they see online, believing their parents do not belong to this era. Parents need to know that social media will increase peer influence and peer pressure.

2. Privacy and Security - There is need to guide you children on how the use social web. There are cases of online bullying and pedophiles. Some adults may pretend to be youths and ask for personal informations, like phone number, home address, school and the like.

All these can result in security threat--Kidnapping et'al. Spend some time with them and let them know the implication of sharing private information with strangers.

3. Health Implication - There's popularity contest--who has the most friends, most comments on social media sites.

I will continue it later. I have to attend to dramma rehearsals now. Permit the typos, I am yet to edit it. ;-)